Das Gupta, J. - (1.)This appeal by special leave arises out of an industrial dispute between the appellant company, the Airlines Hotel Private Limited, Bombay, which runs hotel business in the city of Bombay and its workmen. The workmen had raised demands in regard to a number of matters including, wages, service charges and provident fund. The demand in the matter of service charges was divided into five heads, one of which was inspection of the company's accounts books, bills and receipt books etc.,"to ascertain the correct amount collected by the management and due to the workers." The Government made a reference for adjudication by an industrial Tribunal under Section 10 of the Act as regards all the demands, excepting one, viz., the demand for inspection of accounts in connection with the amount of service charges. The Tribunal made an award in favour of the workers as regards the demand on the question of wages and the demand for provident fund. The demand as regards service charges was rejected except that the Tribunal directed all outstanding arrears in respect of what the company admitted to be payable to workers to be paid within one month and that a direction was given for giving access to the workers to the books of account for the purpose of ascertaining the amount collected. The special leave granted by this Court was limited to three points viz. (1) the matter of inspection of accounts: (2)the wages ; and (3) the provident fund with the other portions of the award we are not concerned in this appeal.
(2.)The appellant's main contention on the first question is that the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to give any direction to the appellant to give access to the workers to the account books in view of the fact that the Government had in terms refused to refer the dispute as regards the inspection of accounts, in our opinion, this contention should prevail.
(3.)On behalf of the workemen it was urged that the only result of the refusal of the Government to refer for adjudication the demand for inspection of accounts was that the Tribunal would have no jurisdiction to deal with this matter directly; but that that would not stand in the way of giving such directions as the Tribunal might think necessary as ancillary to its award on any other point in dispute. It is urged that the Tribunal has given this direction not as a decision on a matter which was not referred to it but only as incidental to the dispute as regards service charges that was in fact referred. If the question of inspection of accounts had not at all been raised so that there was no question of refusal to refer the question, there might perhaps be some scope for an argument that the question might have been considered as involved in and incidental to the question of service charges that was referred. That however is not the position here. As has already been pointed out, the workmen had mentioned five different heads of the demand for service charges, one of the heads being for inspection of accounts, in these words:-
"The management should place all the account books, bills and receipt books etc., from 1-1-57 onwards and relevant documents of the Airlines Hotel Private Ltd., before the representatives of Bombay Hotels Kamgar Union for inspection to ascertain the correct amount collected by the management and due to the workers."
It was this demand which the government refused to refer because "the government was satisfied that there was no case for reference thereof to a tribunal for the reason that this demand was not reasonable." In these circumstances, there can be no justification for the view that what could not be done directly because of this refusal could be done indirectly on the plea that it was incidental. In our opinion, the Tribunal had no jurisdiction to give the direction as regards inspection of accounts. That direction must accordingly be set aside.